"Agronomic Revolution" Changed Life on Earth, Onset in Precambrian not Cambrian
In the history of life on Earth, a dramatic and revolutionary change in the nature of the sea floor occurred in the early Cambrian (541-485 million years ago): the “agronomic revolution.” This phenomenon was coupled with the diversification of marine animals that could burrow into seafloor sediments.
This was the first discovery of such deeply penetrating burrows.
A team of researchers, primarily based in Japan, surveyed Bayan Gol Valley, western Mongolia, and found late Ediacaran trace fossils in marine carbonate rocks. They identified U-shaped, penetrative trace fossils, called Arenicolites, from 11 beds located more than 130 meters below the lowermost occurrence of Treptichnus pedum, widely recognized as the marker of the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary. The researchers confirmed the late Ediacaran age of the rocks, estimated to be between 555 and 541 million years old, based on the stable carbon isotope record.
Credit: Tatsuo Oji
When a bed with burrows is cut perpendicular to the bedding plane, the burrows are ‘U-shaped’, with two openings toward the sea floor. The depth of the burrows reaches up to 4 cm. The animals that lived inside the burrows were presumably elongated in shape, with the mouth at one end and the anus at the other. Animals with such active burrowing capability are inferred to have been bilaterians, and have not been clearly identified from the previous fossil record.
“These trace fossils indicate that the agronomic revolution actually began in the latest Ediacaran in at least one setting,” co-author Stephen Dornbos explains. “Thus, this revolution did not proceed in a uniform pattern across all depositional environments during the Cambrian radiation, but rather in a patchwork of varying bioturbation levels across marine seafloors that lasted well into the early Paleozoic.”
Koomi Sung
Nagoya University
The article, “Penetrative trace fossils from the late Ediacaran of Mongolia: early onset of the agronomic revolution,” was published in Royal Society Open Science at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.172250
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2018/03/agronomic-revolution-changed-life-on.html
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